InnerSelf

Each of us has the opportunity to accept and welcome the gift of living fully in the present. When we awaken to the eternal here and now, we feel alive, mobilized, our senses quickened. Each moment fully experienced becomes an integral part of the sculpting of our future. As we live today, we create our tomorrows.

We all have the deep-seated belief that if we practice long and hard enough, our problems will disappear. And beneath that hidden belief lies an even deeper one: that life should be free from pain. But, we will always have difficulties. We will always have eighty-three problems.

I know a man who prayed to receive checks in the mail. Then he did. Unfortunately, they were social security checks addressed to the previous tenants of his apartment. He would have done better to pray to recognize himself as a prosperous being living in an abundant universe that meets all his needs in wondrous ways.

The path with heart has no set of predictable moves to ensure success. It is not a set of routines or a prescription of step-by-step actions; it is a philosophy, a way of seeing and being in the world that leads you to your life task, the contribution that spirit asks you to make.

by Billie Biederman.

When I asked the question -- How does it feel to be sixty? -- of my teacher at the Gurdjieff Foundation, she took her time to ponder it before answering. At last she uttered one succinct word: "Relieved." She went on, "In our teens and twenties, we are absorbed in educating ourselves and plotting our futures; then we are busy working toward realizing..."

by Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, and Brett Johnson. We look around at the world's problems and wish they would go away, but they stubbornly persist despite our most heartfelt desires. So we end up living in a kind of ethical haze. It seems that everything and everyone is for sale. Nothing remains sacred.

Every creative venture has its moments when it would be easy to say, This is too much, it's hopeless. The person with will and determination says, This is challenging, and I will find a way to make it work. The first person is saying, I give up; the second, I will make it happen.

by Alan Cohen. A Course in Miracles asks us to keep our priorities in order. Spirit first, matter second. People before stuff. Love before fear. Leo Buscaglia noted, We were born to love people and use things, but we learn to love things and use people.

by Woody Hochswender, Greg Martin & Ted Morino.

Just as true happiness is not simply the absence of problems but an internal life state that enables us to challenge any obstacles to happiness that come our way, health is not simply the absence of illness. The important issue is whether we defeat sickness when it comes or whether sickness defeats us...

by Vincent Cole.

Each time you have told yourself, I am this, or I am that, you kept yourself limited. You have conformed to a particular way of thinking and a particular way of acting in the world. You have restricted yourself to a certain code of behavior, dictated not by true desire of the heart, but by outside influences.

If you want change in your life, then you are the one who must do the changing. When you change, then all the other people in your world will change in relation to you. Are you willing to change? If you are willing, then you can create the life you say you want. All you have to do is change some thoughts and release some beliefs. Sound simple? It is. However, it's not always easy.

by Randy Peyser. What am I doing? is the most frequent question I ask as I let go of my most recent job and relationship. The answer always comes back the same: You are being true to yourself. You are living your Truth. This is crazy, I say to myself. No job, no security, saving good-bye to someone who loves me, whom I love.

by Phillip C. McGraw, Ph.D. Unlike dreams, which tend to gloss over important details, or omit them altogether, goals leave no room for confusion about that which is desired. Express your goal in terms of specific events or behaviors.

We may expect great transformations throughout human culture, as mankind becomes more responsible for its knowledge, and thus its deeds. We've become fully accountable, whether we like it or not. From this time forth, man may choose to no longer be enslaved by darkness...

by Richard C. Michael, Ph.D.

The world's favorite pastime is not football, soccer, or baseball but gossip. People love to gossip about one another. The next time you are at the check out line in your grocery store notice all the papers and magazines that thrive on gossip...

Whenever Martha had to deal with someone who was getting on her nerves or was seriously upsetting her, she was supposed to think, 'Peace be with you!' That was supposed to loosen up tension, smooth aggression, and calm anger, and she would get healthier by the day.

For a long time, I hated being human. I used to hate being stereotyped into any category, even being human, because humanity has done so many bad things since it moved out of 'the gardens.' Talk about carrying inappropriate patterns about being in community or group...

When I heard this story, I stopped in my tracks. What a powerful model for compassion in action! I pray that I might be so sensitive to support others in their sense of well-being and transform potentially painful situations with a stroke of kindness.

by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky. 'Our present thoughts and choices are the sole determiner of our present experience.' Because this statement is so foreign to how we usually approach life, I would like to give you an illustration from my own life.

Many highly intelligent motivated professionals let their habitual emotional reactions get in the way of learning. Even some of us who say we relish constructive criticism can have strong emotional reactions when we receive negative feedback about our attitudes and behavior.

Most people's pictures of reality are fear-based and limiting, and do not serve us. Yet we take them home and replicate them in our own lives, to the point that we believe they're our own. Then we wonder why we, and the people we know, are so unhappy.

by Alan Cohen.

Chris Chrysler was a skilled and devoted violinist who had a lifelong dream to own a Stradivarius. For many years Chris worked hard to earn enough money to buy the coveted instrument. Finally he took his life savings to New York City's music district...

by Rick Lewis.

We might say there are two types of mind within us -- the mind that is generative and the mind that is receptive. Generative mind keeps us awake at night, playing nonexistent chess games with the circumstances of our lives. Generative mind makes us restless, jumpy, edgy; it is primarily the alleviation of these effects for which meditation has become most known and practiced in the West.

by Alan Watts. You might say that not-forcing is the second principle of the Tao -- in Chinese it is called wu wei, and it means literally 'not doing', but would be much better translated to give it the spirit of 'not forcing' or 'not obstructing'. Wu wei when applied to human activity refers to a person who does not get in his or her own way.

by Alan Cohen. Are you so sure your mistakes are just mistakes? Or could they be building blocks to a success beyond any you imagined? Everything is part of something bigger, and mistakes are no exception. Every minus is half of a plus, waiting for a stroke of vertical awareness

Take a minute to reflect on your ability or inability to tell your truth, particularly in the workplace. Notice how frequently you say things that are safe or politically correct and don't say the things that are true for you but are not necessarily as safe. It is important to recognize the cost of withholding our truth, both for ourselves and for the organizations in which we work.

by Julia Camerom. If you'll pardon the levity, most of us are afraid of fear. We think it's a bad thing. Because so many of our experiences with fear have been negative, we fail to see fear as positive or useful. It is both. Let me repeat: Fear is positive and useful.

by Julia Cameron. Worry has an anxious and unfocused quality. It skitters subject to subject, fixating first on one thing, then on another. Like a noisy vacuum cleaner, its chief function is to distract us from what we really are afraid of. Worry is a kind of emotional anteater poking into all corners for trouble.

by Barbel Mohr.

Following is a list of tips, bits of advice, and wise sayings or excerpts, including fragments of spiritual knowledge, spiritual laws, and laws of fate. They present a checkered mixture and are meant as reminders to help you create a full and active life.

by Alan Cohen.

In the film Being John Malkovich, an unhappy guy named Craig discovers a portal into movie star John Malkovich's mind, through which he can live vicariously for fifteen minutes. Soon there is a long line of people paying $200 to enter the portal and be someone else.

How much is a kind word worth? How deeply can a touch heal? How important are your little interactions with your family, friends, and clients? Never underestimate the power of a kind word or thought. It may affect one or many, many people without you even knowing it. Even a gentle touch can make a huge difference.

by Alan Cohen. When we need to know a truth, we tend to look outside ourselves for answers, and the last place we look is in our own heart. Meanwhile, all that we could ever need to know abides at the core of our being.

Most astrologers subscribe to some version of the idea that nothing can happen that is not "promised" in the natal chart. This is unquestionably the backbone of astrological theory -- the idea that planets are energetically related to each other in ways that tend to be repeated throughout life.

by Richard Dupuis.

With all the technology and modern conveniences we enjoy, living should be easier and more prosperous for everyone. Still, for many there is a gradual erosion of the quality of their lives. The energies that have supported the economic and religious systems of the world in the past are evolving and changing.

Memories and responses to living are passed through your genes from one generation to another. Limited thinking, encouraged and taught to your ancestors, is imprinted in the cells of your body. Everything you deal with in daily living is recorded and stored in your physical body, and just because you do not consciously remember your experiences does not mean the cells of your body forget.

As things happened, various rules and regulations began to rise along with various laws. You accumulated a long array of very specific things to juggle in order to be 'good enough', certain kinds of food, certain kinds of behavior, thoughts, actions, emotions, and on and on. The moment guilt came into your awareness, there arose a fear of God.

A negative condition is anything you perceive as lacking in joyful experience for yourself. Another person may perceive that experience to be joyful and a definitely positive condition. Conditions are relative, for in essence, there is no reality, but simply your perception of it. All is relative.

by Clifton Baron.

If you look in the eyes of a young child, one or two years old, very often it looks as if there is a light on in there. In an adult this light is gone. Where does it go? What happens to it? What is the difference between this child and me that I no longer glow with this brightness?

by Jack McAllen.

 Now is the time for women's equality in Congress and at all other government and corporate decision-making levels. With men, we get rhetoric, more problems and no answers -- but lots of excuses. I am convinced that we need women's realistic, common-sense approach to the needs of modern America.

All things in existence have a cause. Everything in the universe was caused by something else. Throughout the ages, our great spiritual and philosophical masters have taught us that if there is a certain effect you desire, there are certain causes that must be initiated to manifest that desire. If you wish an apple tree, you must plant an apple seed.